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The Clerk of Oxenford
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The comment made by the exemplary Clerk of Oxenford upon those ribald tales of the Miller and the Reeve, is eloquent silence. Out of the fund of his ‘moral vertu’ he might, of course, have drawn a sharp rebuke or at least a grave remonstrance, ‘full of hy sentence’; but unless he were at that time studying ‘aboute som sophyme,‘ he contented himself with silent meditation upon our old sins, so light-heartedly exploited for the entertainment of those whose road led to the shrine of the martyred saint. He knew that often silence is golden and words but sounding brass. As clearly appears in that conversation with Harry Bailey which precedes the tale of Griselda, he himself possessed much of that gracious forbearance, which he very nobly celebrated:
- ‘Hoste,’ quod he, ‘I am under your yerde
- Ye han of us, as now, the governance.’
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1912
References
page 106 note 1 Canterbury Tales, A, 3199 ff.
page 107 note 1 M. Bentinck Smith, Prologue and Knight's Tale, Cambridge, 1908, p. 125.—Mather goes as far as to say ‘Such gifts had to be begged for, and poor scholars commonly so made their way through the University‘
'For he was not lyk a cloisterer,
With a thredbare cope as is a poure scoler.'
(The Prologue, etc., 1899; p. 14). Wyatt uses Skeat's note verbatim but neglects to employ quotation marks (Prologue and Squire's Tale, University Tutorial Series, p. 72). Hinckley quotes from Mather an allusion to begging students in Germany (Notes on Chaucer, p. 23). Liddell goes as far as we can reasonably go: ‘The reference is to the practice of mediæval students who undertook to say masses for the souls of their patrons or their patrons’ relatives in return for money given' (Canterbury Tales, New York, N. Y., 1901; p. 147).
page 108 note 1 Rashdall, Universities, Oxford, 1895, p. 657.
page 108 note 2 Rolls Series, Vol. 50, Parts 1 and 2.
page 109 note 1 See the examples cited in the N. E. D., definition 5; for instance, Mirour Salvacioun, ‘Of some man … the Baptisme of watere he hent.‘ The line in Chaucer certainly does not mean, all that he could get by hook or by crook.
page 110 note 1 The money was, however, only lent, security being required.
page 110 note 2 Anstey, i, p. 213.
page 110 note 3 Anstey, i, pp. 194 f.
page 111 note 1 Rashdall, ii, pp. 444 ff.
page 111 note 2 Rashdall, ii, p. 657.
page 112 note 1 Rashdall, ii, p. 668.
page 112 note 2 Anstey, ii, p. 515.
page 112 note 3 Anstey, ii, p. 582.
page 113 note 1 Brodrick, Memorials of Merton College, Oxford Historical Society, iv, p. 19.
page 113 note 2 Brodrick, p. 20.
page 114 note 1 D. N. B.—I may seem to be too much at ease with Chaucer's somewhat shadowy philosopher. I hold to Gollancz's poet-philosopher as against J. T. T. Brown's poet and philosopher. Nor do I think Professor Carleton's Brown's “important confirmation of Mr. Brown's belief” in Bale's “Index” confirms it at all. The “Index” appears frequently to repeat a name in passing from one source to another, here from Nicholas Brigham to the Merton Catalogue. Compare among many the name of Chaucer, four times registered. It is customary for Bale to indicate a new writer by a capital black-letter; the “Index” gives no such indication of a second Radulphus.—See Brown, Note on the Question of Strode's Authorship of The Pearl, Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc., 1904, pp. 146 ff.
page 114 note 2 D. N. B., Wycliffe.
page 114 note 3 I may mention here the conjecture of Mr. Norman Moore that Gaddesden, another Merton man, is the original of the ‘Doctour of Phisik.‘ Cf. D. N. B., Gaddesden.
page 115 note 1 The colophon at the end of pt. II, Paragraph 40, reads:— Explicit tractatus de conclusionibus Astrolabi compilatus per Galfridum Chaucer ad Filium suum Lodewicum Scholarem tunc temporis Oxonie ac sub tutela illius nobillissimi philosophi Magistri N. Strode. Ms. Dd. 3, 53 (part 2) in the Cambridge University Library. The colophon is written ‘in a later hand’ (Skeat's ed. E. E. T. S., First Series, xxix, pp. 51 and 87).—Gollancz (D. N. B., Strode), while rejecting the interpretation here mentioned, writes, ‘although the initial before Strode's name is usually read “N,” it might stand for “ R.”‘
page 115 note 2 The earlier biographers, as is well known, concluded that Chaucer was a University man. Speght assigns him to Canterbury or Merton College, ‘with John Wickelife, whose opinions in religion he much affected.‘ See Hammond, Bibliographical Manual, p. 21.